


All the Lies We Bought

by J (j_writes)



Category: Hunger Games (2012), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Multi, Post-Mockingjay, Pre-Epilogue, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-04 02:28:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_writes/pseuds/J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Life is fascinating here in Twelve," Peeta said, mimicking the face he put on in interviews.  "I bake.  Katniss hunts.  Haymitch drinks.  The right balance of priorities for a trio of former victors and figureheads of the revolution, don't you think?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Lies We Bought

**Author's Note:**

> given the pairing, you likely know what you're in for, but to clarify: contains excessive alcohol use; a substantial age difference; some physical violence in a non-sexy context; references to arena violence, torture, and suicidal ideation; a couple of instances of vomiting; and some sex acts occurring while one or more of the participants is drinking. feel free to avoid if any of those things are not for you.

They moved back into their old houses without even trying to reconstruct their old lives.

They lived next door to each other, and Katniss never shut off her lights. Haymitch took to sleeping at the kitchen table with a knife in one hand and a bottle in the other, so that when he woke in the night, the room was lit with the glow of her house through the windows. It was comforting, in an odd sort of way, and they revolved around each other like that for months, existing on each other's periphery without ever interacting.

The morning he heard the knock at his door, he had to wait for it to come again before he believed it had actually happened. He padded to it in his socks and found that it took more effort than he'd expected to get his fingers to close on the handle just right. "Morning, sweetheart," he was drawling as he opened the door, expecting that familiar exasperated look, and was met instead with an armful of flapping feathers.

"Here," she said, unceremoniously dropping the goose on the floor in front of him. "She was alive in one of my traps."

"…Thanks?" he offered. "I'd prefer him in a stew, though."

She wrinkled her nose. "She's got no meat on her bones," she said. "She needs to get fattened up for at least another couple of weeks before she'll make for a good meal. See if you can't keep her from dying until then." _And maybe yourself too,_ she didn't add, but he heard it anyway.

"Too busy to raise your own fowl?" he asked, and she shrugged, her braid slipping off her shoulder.

"Something like that. Why, did you have anything better to do?" She looked pointedly around the wreck he had made of his kitchen. "Anyway, you took the house with the fenced-in backyard."

"Want to switch?" he offered.

She took another look around, then turned her eyes to him steadily. "I don't think so, no," she said with the faintest hint of what might have been humor. He took a moment to take in the sight of her, hair tousled from the wind, cheeks pink and looking less thin than the last time he'd seen her. She was clean and healthy looking, and while there were faint rings of darkness under her eyes, she looked like she might have seen the right side of a pillow once or twice in the past week, which was an improvement. She returned his gaze frankly, and looked more resigned than disappointed at the state of him.

"She's getting away," she pointed out, nodding her head towards the goose, who was waddling away into the living room. 

Haymitch shrugged. "Making himself at home, I guess." He nodded at her clothes. "You're hunting again," he said instead of _you look good_.

"And you're still a drunken mess," she replied. "Glad to see nothing much has changed."

"Is glad the word?"

She shrugged. "Not really." She gestured over her shoulder. "I'm going. Keep an eye on her, would you? I'll come over in a few weeks and make us a soup." She looked around the kitchen. "If you have any pots that are even close to usable, that is."

He nodded, carefully not acknowledging the promise. "I'll do some magic and make one appear," he agreed.

"By which you mean pay off someone from town to clean your place for you?" she guessed.

"Probably," he agreed. "Or I'll just buy a new one." He looked around the kitchen. "I'm not sure I ever had a soup pot."

Her laugh was brief and mostly humorless, but it was a sound he'd missed, all the same. "Goodbye, Haymitch," she said, backing to the door and craning her neck to take a look at the goose, who had settled down on his armchair, looking satisfied with itself. 

"Have a good day at work, darling!" he replied cheerfully. "Catch me a squirrel or two."

She gave him the finger just as cheerfully, and he saluted her with his bottle as she headed off of his porch, across the courtyard, and into the woods.

He returned to the living room and looked at the goose, who returned his gaze blankly. "What do you think?" he asked it. "Is she going to be okay?" The goose stood, honked in alarm, and slipped off the chair. "Yeah," he agreed, scooping it up. "More or less what I thought."

She stopped by a few more times over the next few weeks, the visits brief but welcome, pausing to share a cup of coffee with him in the morning, dropping off a parcel from Greasy Sae on her way past his house from town, and he pretended not to notice that the number of geese in his yard was steadily growing, as if she'd started trapping them alive intentionally.

The night she came over to make soup, he picked up the kitchen while she butchered the bird, and by the time she came inside, there was a fire going in the hearth, and most of the empty bottles had been stacked neatly by the window. He chopped the vegetables she lined up in front of him, and they talked idly and almost comfortably about the different pieces of information they'd both picked up regarding the state of the district while the soup pot boiled. They both pretended not to notice that the goose who went into the pot was a different bird entirely from the first one she'd brought over.

They shared a bottle of wine, and she went home at the end of the night on unsteady feet with a container full of stew and a faint smile on her face. Before she headed upstairs to bed, she paused at her kitchen window and raised a hand in a brief wave.  
______________

Autumn came early and sudden, the trees exploding into a riot of color, the wind coming crisp and sharp in the evenings, and Katniss all but disappeared into her house again, her hunting gear gathering dust on her porch, the door never opening. Haymitch started going into town more often, buying provisions along with liquor, and leaving bags of both propped up against her door. 

"I'm going to guess that you're alive in there," he called up at her one afternoon, and that evening she appeared in the window briefly before disappearing again, like a signal. He took it for the offering it was, and he kept delivering supplies, waiting for the breakdown.

It came on a Tuesday night, and he saw her coming before he heard her, winding her way unsteadily down the path, too lightly dressed for the weather, her cheeks pink with wind and the rest of her unhealthily pale. He took a few fortifying gulps from his bottle as he reached for his boots, and by the time he heard her collapse against his front steps, he was settling the bottle onto the windowsill and wrapping a scarf around his neck.

He opened the door to the sight of her crouched over on his steps, puking off the side of them, and he sighed, stepping out and pulling the door closed behind him. "Hello, sunshine," he said dryly, crouching down beside her. He hesitated a moment before reaching out, but when he touched her back lightly, she didn't shake him off, so he kept his hand there for a few moments while she retched. "Let's try to keep this out of the way, what do you think?" he offered. He scooped her hair away from her face and held it in a loose knot against her neck.

"What does it matter?" she mumbled, curling in on herself.

"I've found that you hate yourself a little less on the mornings you wake up without vomit in your hair."

"I've met you," she replied. "You never hate yourself any less."

"No," he agreed, "that's why I said _you_."

"I've _never_ woken up with vomit in my hair," she told him in a tone she must have picked up from Effie.

"Well, it'd be a shame to break your streak, then." She didn't answer, instead dropping her head forward to rest against her arm, and he kept his knuckles pressed against the base of her neck, fingers loosely wrapped around her hair. "Oh, sweetheart," he said, his eyes straying to the window, where his bottle was sitting there taunting him through the glass. "What are we going to do with you?"

"We?" she repeated. "You're the only one I see here. And you're not going to do anything but eyeball that bottle until you can get it back to your face."

"Oh, you _have_ met me," he replied easily. Her skin was chilling under his fingers, and he tilted his head until his scarf slithered off, catching it with his free hand before it hit the snow. He twisted it around her hair to hold it in place, then tucked the ends around her neck. "What do you say?" he asked, waving a hand at the pile of vomit beside the steps. "Have you had enough? Ready to go warm yourself up?"

She hunched down into the scarf and didn't answer him, but settled back until she was sitting against the steps instead of leaning off of them awkwardly. He settled back onto his knees in front of her, and waited, ignoring the damp cold of the ground soaking into his pants. She played with the end of the scarf with frozen fingers for a few moments, then looked up at him, expressionless. "Why did we come back?" she asked.

He shrugged. "You have any ideas for escape plans?" he asked. "I was open to suggestions, but no one seemed to have any."

"For so long, all I wanted was to get out of Twelve," she said. Her fingers twisted the scarf until he wanted to reach out and rescue it from them. "And here we are." She looked blearily out at the courtyard. "Prim hated the fall," she said, almost like a confession.

"Ah." Haymitch rocked back, planting his palms on his knees and nodding. "That's the phase we're at." She glared at him. "No, it's perfectly reasonable, sweetheart. You want things to stop reminding you of your sister, of the arena, of everything that's gone so horribly ass-backwards since your name got pulled out of that bowl. You want to head someplace else, try to find a spot to hang your hat that doesn't make you think of them at every turn. That's fine, we can do that. Let's leave tomorrow. Pack a bag, we'll hit the road, and we'll see how long it takes you until you realize that you're never going to outrun it. That you can make your way through all thirteen districts and the Capitol, and you're going to wake up screaming from the nightmares in every bed you sleep in. But let's go, it'll be a real adventure. Because we haven't had enough of those."

She looked at him like the only reason he survived to finish was because she lacked the energy to raise a hand against him. "Go fuck yourself, Haymitch," she said tonelessly.

He nodded without replying, and joined her on the steps. They watched the last bit of light dimming against the horizon for a few minutes, and the moment was so reminiscent of so many others they'd shared that he half expected Peeta to emerge onto the porch across from them and wave uncertainly. Instead, the courtyard stayed silent and empty, a dull reminder that they were the only ones left. Finally, when Katniss shifted beside him, Haymitch spoke up again. 

"I'd go," he said simply. "If you needed to."

"I know," she replied. She tilted to rest her head on his shoulder, and he didn't put an arm around her, but he carefully balanced them both. "They'd probably kill us."

"Probably," he agreed. "They've done worse."

"Backup plan?" she offered, and he looked down at her, the angle all wrong for him to really see her, just catching the edge of her eyelashes, the resolute curve in the corner of her lips.

"Backup to what?" he asked.

She waved her hand at the empty courtyard. "This."

"Not a very good plan, is it?"

"Yours never are," she pointed out.

He nodded against her head, conceding the point. "No, but their point is usually more along the lines of keeping you alive."

"Why?" she asked, sounding genuinely curious rather than belligerent.

"Because," he replied, running through the long list of answers in his head that were true but not true enough. _Because you're the Mockingjay. Because you're a symbol and a mission and I've spent too much effort making you those things to give up now. Because Peeta would have me killed slowly. Because you're Katniss Everdeen, whose bow took down two nations, and whose voice makes the birds all stop and listen. Because you hate yourself in the same ways I do, and you stand in your window at night to remind me you're still there._ "It's part of the whole mentoring deal."

"Which you've always been so committed to," she replied dryly, but she curled herself against him as if understanding some of his unspoken reasons, and this time he did let his arm fall around her, tucking her against his side and resting his face against the top of her head.

"Backup plan," he agreed quietly. "I told you I'd go, and I meant it. But your end of the deal is that you have to try."

"I've been trying," she pointed out. "But I don't see how this could ever be enough. Not after everything. I hunt. You drink. We…what? Live? Is that what we're calling this?"

"For now," he told her.

"For how long?"

"I don't know, Katniss." He sighed. "The world is changing. Maybe your sentence will be lifted eventually, and even if it's not, things are happening here in Twelve. Potentially important things. Things that could matter."

"I don't want to matter anymore," she said, sounding young and tired.

He sat up, jostling her from his shoulder, and she stretched beside him, looking up at him as he stood. "Too late, sweetheart," he told her bluntly. "You should have thought of that a long time ago." He expected some sort of comment on how she had never asked to become any of the things he had made her into, but she just nodded tiredly instead. "Come on," he said, offering her a hand up. "I'm freezing my ass off out here."

She took his hand and let him pull her to her feet, then made no protest as he ushered her up the stairs with a hand on her back. He slept in the armchair that night, deep and restful, and woke to the sight of her still curled up asleep on his couch with a bottle clutched in her hand.  
______________

Things returned to their new definition of normal for a while, and the trees were nearly bare of leaves by the next time an unexpected visitor made his way up Haymitch's path.

"Anywhere in the world," Haymitch said, stepping out onto the porch, and Peeta's look up at him was more tolerant and pleased than annoyed. "And you came back here." He left his bottle on the porch and crossed the yard to fold the boy up in his arms. "Welcome home, kid," he said roughly against Peeta's hair.

"Home," Peeta repeated, sounding skeptical, but he hugged Haymitch back, smelling clean and sterile like the parts of 13 that Haymitch most wanted to forget. "Thanks, Haymitch."

"Couldn't think of anything better to do with yourself?" Haymitch asked, letting him go but keeping a hand on his shoulder to steer him towards the porch and soften the words. "I'm sure Heavensbee and the new regime had all kinds of plans for you."

Peeta gave him a wry smile. "Why do you think I left?" he asked. He waited until he'd settled down into a chair on the porch to ask, "How is she?" and Haymitch almost admired his restraint.

"Hunting," he replied, as if it were a real answer, and maybe it was, because Peeta looked satisfied with it, almost relieved.

"I don't…" he hesitated, looking towards her house, and Haymitch nodded.

"She won't be back until dark," he assured him, "and she hasn't exactly been social. You can stay here tonight, if you're not up to…" he waved a hand. "Things."

"Thanks." Peeta said. "I'm not sure she'd be happy to see me."

"Probably not, but I wouldn't take it personally. Happy isn't exactly in her repertoire these days." Haymitch took a sip from his bottle, then held it out. Peeta hesitated briefly before reaching for it and following his lead, letting out a cough as the liquor burned his throat. "She chased someone off from your house a few weeks ago, though," he added, and watched Peeta's reaction out of the corner of his eye.

"Yeah?" Peeta looked intrigued.

Haymitch grinned. "We've gotten some settlers, you know. Refugees from other districts, thinking that maybe if the Mockingjay can make it out of a place like this…" he shrugged. "I don't know what they're thinking, actually. But they've been showing up all the same. A couple from Seven took a liking to your place, and you'd have thought they were trying to set it on fire, the way she chased them out of there."

He felt a sharp pain at how little Peeta's smile had changed. "Good," he said simply. "I liked that house." He reached for the bottle again, and they shared it silently between them for a while, watching the shadows lengthen as the sun went down.

"Are you staying?" Haymitch finally asked, meaning _are you a prisoner too?_ , and Peeta shook his head.

"I don't know," he said, answering both questions at once. "For a while. And then…we'll see."

They moved inside as darkness fell, and Haymitch had long since forgotten to feel shame for the state of his house, but Peeta's slow look around was enough to bring back the vaguest memory of it. He shoved a pile of clothes off the end of the sofa and gestured for Peeta to sit. "I don't have much in the way of food," he said apologetically, but Peeta shrugged and held up the bottle. 

"Not hungry," he replied. 

They talked about nothing for a while, somewhere between gossip and news, and eventually Peeta's attention was caught by the lights turning on in the house next door. He drank more, and got quieter.

"Oh, hell." Haymitch said, eyeing him. "You're a melancholy drunk, aren't you?"

"I...I don't know."

"You could have warned me, you know. I hate drinking with melancholy drunks."

"You like drinking with anyone."

"No, I like _drinking_ ," Haymitch corrected. "The anyone is optional." He eyed him more intently. "Have you even been drunk before?"

Peeta shrugged. "I guess. Probably."

"That's a no, then." He gestured at the bottle. "Drink up. You're going to have to start sometime, if you're going to live around here." At Peeta's puzzled look, he clarified, "There's not much else to do."

Peeta's brow furrowed in a frown. "Is Katniss…" he hesitated.

"As much of a wreck as I am?" Haymitch finished for him. "Not yet. Give it time."

"I'd rather not," Peeta replied dryly.

"Me neither," Haymitch agreed. He reached to take the bottle from Peeta's hands and lifted it to his lips for a long drag. As he handed it back over, he caught Peeta's eyes and held them. "I'm glad you're back," he said, and Peeta nodded as if knowing he meant it.

"I don't know if I am," he replied honestly. "But I hope I will be."

"Best you can hope for, really," Haymitch said, and he stretched out on the sofa beside Peeta, the two of them passing the bottle between themselves with increasing unsteadiness, neither of them looking too closely at the light from the windows next door.  
______________

The first snowfall of the year came in the early morning, and Haymitch sat at the table drinking coffee and watching as the courtyard went slowly monochrome outside the window. It was a while before he saw any movement against the backdrop of white, and he wasn't surprised that it was Peeta, appearing first to sweep off his porch, and then to carefully clean off his walkway, a bright red scarf wrapped loosely around his neck.

He paused when he'd completed his walk, leaning on his shovel and breathing for a few moments, breath visible in the air, and Haymitch almost thought about going out to the porch, offering a warm mug of coffee. But then Peeta was putting his resolve face on, marching across the courtyard, and starting to shovel Katniss's walk with single-minded determination.

The lights in Katniss's house were on, but there was no sign of her. She'd been a rare sight since Peeta had returned, disappearing into the woods earlier than either of them woke, returning late. She and Peeta would both bring their packages of meat and bread to Haymitch directly, stopping in for a drink and a talk about nothing significant, but they left them on each other's doorsteps like a peace offering. Sometimes they'd stop in to his house at the same time, and they'd sit together, the three of them, sharing a brief meal or an interlude on the porch, pleasant but stilted.

Haymitch watched as Peeta made his way up the walk, clearing it of snow, carefully piling it on either side, until he reached the porch. He hesitated briefly, then shoveled off the stairs as well, his shovel scraping against the wood. 

He finished without so much as a flickering light from inside the house, and he stood there for a long time, looking at the door. He glanced over at Haymitch's house, and didn't seem surprised at all to see him there at the window, coffee clutched in his hand. Haymitch raised a hand in a brief wave, and Peeta's smile in return seemed genuine. He set the shovel down against the stairway, then made his way down to the lawn. He glanced over his shoulder at her upstairs windows, then knelt and started piling snow up on itself. 

Haymitch watched for a while, as he slowly built upward from the ground, packing the snow down where it was too powdery to hold together well. He eventually wandered out to the back of the house to check on the geese, huddled into their coop and anxious to be fed. When he returned, the snowman was nearly done, a hand raised to wave up at Katniss, a friendly smile on its face.

"You're too good at that," Haymitch said, and Peeta turned to grin sheepishly at him.

"Sculpture was never my strong suit," he admitted. He tilted his head, scrutinizing the snowman. "He needs…something."

"This," Haymitch said, reaching for the scarf around Peeta's neck and unwinding it, then wrapping it around the snowman.

Peeta laughed, but he let the scarf stay there as he followed Haymitch home to share his coffee, warming himself by the fire. "I could do your walk too," he offered, toasting his hands, and Haymitch shook his head. 

"Why bother?" Haymitch asked. "No one visits me but you two, and I'd rather keep it that way."

They drank their coffee quietly, and when Haymitch got up to brew some more, he returned to find Peeta standing at the window, looking out at the snow and smiling with unrestrained fondness. As Haymitch crossed to press a new mug of coffee into Peeta's hand, he peeked over his shoulder to see Katniss, standing on her porch with the wind blowing back her hair, a matching smile on her face.  
______________

He woke in the middle of a snowstorm to a sound he couldn't place, and sat bolt upright, knife clenched in his fist. The snow was coming down in sheets outside, and he peered into the darkness at the shadow materializing by the door, faintly lit by the dull glow of the lights next door.

"You don't need that," Katniss said quietly from beside the bed, stepping out of the shadows, and he felt her fingers close around his wrist, taking the knife away with her other hand and stabbing it easily into the wood of the bedside table.

"Jesus, Katniss," he said, "what are you doing here? You're lucky I didn't just take your face off."

"Couldn't sleep," she said, and there was a tone to her voice that he couldn't place. She tugged at the corner of his sheets, kneeling lightly onto the bed beside him. "Thought you'd be in the kitchen."

"Thought wrong," he said shortly, but he lifted the blankets to tuck them around her. She pulled them tighter, burrowing into them until she was stretched out beside him.

"You picked the room on my side of the house," she said, her eyes bright in the light from the window, and he nodded.

"Better than a night light," he said. "Damn good thing we don't pay for electric."

"We don't pay for anything," she said, and he didn't have a response to that, so he stayed silent. She was shivering beside him. 

"Did you come over here like that?" he asked, reaching to touch the light fabric of her sleeve, and she nodded against his pillow. "You're out of your damn mind, you know that?"

"I've been informed," she said flatly, but she let him wrap an arm around her shoulders and curled closer to him. He could feel her slowly warming beside him, the chill of her skin easing away, her breath coming more evenly against his shoulder.

"Can you – " she began after a while, then fell silent.

He tilted his head to look at her. "I can do a lot of things," he replied, prompting. She smiled faintly, and then her expression changed, looking directly at him and shifting to press her body against his in a way that made the rest of her question suddenly very apparent. "Oh," he breathed out, and she took it for encouragement, sliding against him and looking startled but pleased at his body's nearly instant response. "Fuck _me_ ," he cursed, and she half smiled, looking up at him.

"That's the idea," she said.

"Katniss." He reached to touch her face, hoping to remind her that this was _him_ , and therefore a terrible idea, but she leaned against it and closed her eyes, then reached between them to touch him with tentative fingers. He shuddered at the feeling of someone touching him for the first time in far too long, wanting desperately to push up off the bed into her hand, but he held himself still, reaching for her wrist instead and stopping her motion. "What are you doing here?"

"I want to get fucked," she said bluntly, and he winced at the raw honesty of the words.

"No, I mean, what are you doing _here_?" He didn't need to look in the direction of the window that faced Peeta's house to make his point, but he did anyway.

Her face hardened. "I just want – I don't want everything to have to _mean_ something," she said. "I just need to – " she closed her eyes, arching against him, and her wrist twisted in his grasp like his fingers were the only thing keeping her from touching herself.

" _Fuck_ , Katniss," he groaned, "go home and jerk off like the rest of us do." She blinked like the absurdity of the moment was finally sinking in, and he sighed. "There you go, now you're getting it."

"No, it's just…I hadn't thought about it, really." She sat back a little, and regarded him like she was seeing him in a new light. "Of course you do, but I hadn't – " she twisted her wrist to touch him again, and his traitorous eyes fluttered closed briefly as he let out an unsteady breath. 

"You need to stop that," he told her.

"You don't know what I need," she replied, but she pulled her hands away from him and sat back. 

"No," he agreed, "I have no earthly idea what made you think this would be a good idea."

"Because I want to _fuck_ , Haymitch," she said sharply. "Because I've killed people with my bare hands, and I've buried nearly everyone I've ever cared about, and I've brought down a government more or less singlehandedly, and I've never had anyone touch me. And Peeta – " she broke off at his name, then continued. "He wants too much from me." She slid off his lap and stretched out next to him, taking his hand and pulling it closer to her. "I don't owe you anything, and I'm going to keep not owing you anything, whether you do this or not."

"I'm not going to fuck you," he said, and she shrugged. 

"Do _something_ , then," she said. She looked up at him, her expression familiar and yet entirely new, and when she whispered, " _Please_ " and pressed his hand against her, he closed his eyes and listened to the quiet sounds she made as he touched her.

She came quickly, curling up on herself and breathing heavily, and when he went to pull his hand back, she grabbed his wrist and didn't let go until he slid his fingers into her again. The second time was slower, longer, and she let her head drop back as she came, breathing out a shaky moan that would have had a younger version of him coming in his pants.

He reached to tuck her hair back into place as she opened her eyes, and the smile she gave him was small but beautifully unguarded. She stretched luxuriously, and he let himself laugh quietly.

"Not regretting it yet, then," he said. 

Her smile melted away as quickly as it had arrived. "I'm not going to," she said with an edge of defensiveness.

"We'll see, sweetheart," he said. He lay down next to her and eyed her. "So," he said, "did it do whatever magic thing you were hoping for?"

"I wasn't looking for magic," she replied flatly. "I'm pretty sure we both know better than that."

"Yeah, well, if you'd asked me yesterday, I'd have said we both knew better than _this_ ," he said, waving at their bodies curled up under the blanket together. "Shows what I know." He yawned, pressing his face into the pillow, and she made a soft protesting noise.

"I didn't – " she began, reaching for him, but he stopped her hand gently, tucking the sheets down between them.

"You didn't," he agreed. "And you're not going to. Not tonight."

"Guess I am going to owe you something, then," Katniss said, and he frowned, leaning up on an arm to look at her seriously.

"You owe me nothing, sweetheart," he said, and she looked faintly surprised, then nodded. She pressed against him and closed her eyes, and he expected her to stay there for a few moments and then sneak away as quietly as she'd arrived, but instead she fell asleep nearly instantly.

He retrieved his knife from the table and stayed awake, watching the snow slowly building up drifts against the window, and feeling her twitch in her dreams beside him. In the morning, after she left wearing a pair of his boots and a coat that was too big for her, he took a shower so long it ran out all the hot water, and jerked off harder than he had in years.  
______________

"I found a lake," Katniss told them one morning over coffee, and Haymitch looked up with interest.

"How far?" he asked.

"A few miles west of where I usually hunt."

"Any fish?"

She shrugged. "I found it during the winter, when it was frozen over. I was thinking of going back, though, now that the weather is warm." She was quiet for a long time. "I think I might have been there before," she said finally, "when I was little."

Peeta looked at her in interest. "Is that how you knew how to swim?"

She nodded. "My father taught me, while we were hunting. There was a lake with trees all around it, a good place to find game, but sometimes in the summer – " she broke off and shrugged. "I guess all lakes in the woods look the same."

"We should go," Peeta said decisively, and Katniss raised her eyebrows at him.

"You're going to swim?" she asked him, sounding incredulous.

His face tightened, and he shook his head. "No," he said shortly. "But we could pack some food, go into the woods with you." He turned to Haymitch. "You know how to fish?"

Haymitch shrugged. "I knew Finnick for a long time," was all he needed to say.

They went on a day that was warm and clear, Katniss leading the way, all of them carrying packs of provisions and supplies. The area beside the lake was steep and rocky, so Haymitch and Peeta set up the blanket and food on the grassy slope further back while Katniss scouted the trees around them for danger or prey. She returned with a couple of rabbits in her bag to find Peeta stretched out with a sketchpad, Haymitch settled at the bottom of the hill, setting up his pole and sipping from a bottle slowly.

She disappeared into the trees to their left, and a while later she came floating out across the lake, kicking occasionally, stretched out and looking up at the sky. Haymitch watched her drifting lazily for a while, and when he glanced over his shoulder, Peeta was watching her as well, pausing occasionally to add a few lines to his sketchpad. Eventually she flipped over and swam a few laps, hard splashing strokes breaking the quiet of the clearing, and she ended up where she'd started, emerging a while later dressed in her clothes again, dripping onto the stone beach.

She settled by Haymitch's side, tucking her knees up and letting her head rest against them, sighing contentedly. "Wear yourself out?" he asked, and she made a noncommittal noise, reaching to push her dripping hair away from her face. She started braiding it back, but got bored halfway through, stretching out instead and leaning her head against Haymitch's leg. His pants were soaked in seconds, and he made a face. "Thanks, sweetheart," he said, but he carded his fingers through the ends of her hair aimlessly to soften the words. He studied the tangle of braiding carefully, then started twisting the remaining hair into place. She made a questioning noise, looking up at him, and he shrugged. "It's been a few decades," he said, "but I _have_ done this before."

It hurt less than he thought it would, winding her hair into place and remembering the women he used to do the same for, and by the time he finished securing the end, she was asleep, hand resting comfortably over his knee. 

They stayed like that for a long time until Peeta lit a fire to start cooking some of the fish, and she woke already reaching for the end of her hair, checking on his progress. Her smile up at him was brief but thankful, and when they climbed up to the blanket to start slicing the bread and laying out the rest of the food, Peeta's sketchbook was lying there open to a scene of the two of them sitting together by the side of the lake, his fingers in her hair, both of them looking more peaceful than they ever did in reality.  
______________

He knew something was wrong when he heard them both laughing.

He was out back, feeding the geese, and he thought they were fighting at first, hearing their raised voices through the open window next door. But then there was a crash and a peal of laughter edging on hysterical. It was a sound he'd never heard from her, and it chilled him right through instantly. He dropped the rest of the feed on the ground, letting the geese pile on top of each other trying to get to it, and he made his way up her back steps, knocking loudly at her door. 

Their voices hushed immediately, and then there was a sharp wheezing laugh from Peeta and the door flew open, Katniss leaning against it with a bottle in her hand. She reached for Haymitch, pulling him inside by his shirt and stuffing the bottle into his hand. 

"Here," she said, "you're going to need this."

"Are you…all right?" he asked, hazarding a glance around the house. It looked the same as always, neat and barely lived in except for the living room, where she spent all her time. Peeta's head was just visible, hanging off the edge of the couch as he gasped for breath.

"Oh, we're fucking fantastic," he said, which made Katniss snort indelicately as she closed the door behind them too hard, and something about the way her fingers tightened on the knob made Haymitch wonder if she would rather just open it again and keep slamming it until the sound drowned out whatever had brought that helpless note to her voice.

"What's – " he began, and Katniss steered him into the living room. The television was playing on mute in the corner, Caesar Flickerman mugging into the camera, and Haymitch winced.

"They're dragging that fossil out again? What could they possibly – " He stopped short, looking between the two of them, Katniss leaning unsteadily against the doorframe and Peeta sprawled out with a drunken smile on his face that looked dangerously close to tears. "Oh, you have got to be shitting me."

Peeta raised his glass in Haymitch's direction. "Where are they now?" he asked. "Haven't you been wondering? Because apparently everyone else has. And Caesar is going to tell us _all_ about it. In a live televised special."

"On the anniversary of what would have been Reaping day," Katniss concluded. The corner of her mouth was twitching like she wanted to break off laughing again but was barely holding it together. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

"Jesus _fuck_ ," Haymitch swore, and lifted the bottle to his lips, taking a long drag and lamenting the fact that he was so conditioned to alcohol he would probably never see the kind of hysterical drunk the others had reached.

"So it's a matter of, what? Minutes? Hours? Days? Until they show up on our porches with their cameras and their notepads, digging for a story that doesn't exist," Peeta said. "Life is fascinating here in Twelve," he said, mimicking the face he put on in interviews. "I bake. Katniss hunts. Haymitch drinks. The right balance of priorities for a trio of former victors and figureheads of the revolution, don't you think?"

"Nope," Haymitch said, reaching to take the glass from Peeta's hand. Peeta made a half-hearted grab for it, but Haymitch swallowed it down instead and set the empty glass aside. "Not gonna happen."

"No?" Peeta asked. "What, are you going to stop them with that knife of yours?" 

"No, I'm going to do them one better," Haymitch said. He offered Peeta a hand up, which he took reluctantly, letting Haymitch pull him to his feet. "I'm going to stop them with the worst weapon anyone has against the Capitol." He pointed a finger at Peeta's face. "You, my friend, are exactly right. Boredom." He turned to Katniss. "How much game do we have saved up between us?"

She shrugged. "Some. I've been cold storing some of it for next winter." 

"Good. Peeta? How are we on basic supplies, for baking and whatever else people find useful in a kitchen sense?"

"The train just came through a few days ago, so we should be all right for a while," he said. "What – "

"Go home, pack up everything you can't live without," Haymitch told him. "Meet us at my house. Katniss, I'll help haul some of that meat over. You go pack your things."

She gave him a withering look. "I don't have things," she pointed out. 

He looked her up and down. "Look, sweetheart, I'm not going to object to you wearing your pajamas from now until whenever the Capitol drones get sick of us and leave, but I think you might be happier if you had one or two other options. And you might as well bring that angry fuzzball of yours too. We can set him and his claws on the first photographer who gets too close." He waved a hand upstairs. "I'm serious. We don't know when they'll get here. The sooner we're settled, the better."

"Why your house?" Peeta objected. "Your house is pit."

"Yes, but it's a pit where we keep unreasonable quantities of liquor," Haymitch pointed out. "Bottles are fragile and heavy, and they're not cheap. I don't know about you, but I find the idea of moving some food a lot more manageable." He paused, looking towards the back of the house. "Plus, we'll have to throw some grain out the window for the geese every once in a while." Katniss gave him a look that was somewhere between triumph and fondness, and he reached to tug on the end of her braid. "Yes, princess, I'm still keeping the little buggers alive, even if they do shit all over my yard."

"I've seen your house," she pointed out. "Goose shit is the least of your problems." She circled the room, grabbing a couple of books and notebooks and tucking them under her arm. She was halfway to the stairs when she paused and turned back to them. "We’re doing this, then?"

Haymitch shrugged. "I'm doing this," he said. "You two can decide for yourselves, but giving them nothing is the best option we have."

She looked out the window at the lush green woods behind Peeta's house, almost longingly. But she nodded. "I think you're right."

"I know I am," Haymitch told her.

He turned to look at Peeta, who was scrutinizing the two of them. But he nodded too, crossing to the door and touching Katniss's face lightly. "I'm going to go pack some things," he said.

Haymitch raised his eyebrows at her, and she didn't quite dignify him with a response. Instead, she nodded towards the kitchen. "Most of the meat's in the icebox," she said. "If you actually feel like boarding up the windows, there's some wood out back."

"Think that's overkill?" Haymitch asked.

"Yes," she replied. "Do it anyway."

He watched her run up the stairs, leaving her books balanced precariously on the railing, and once she'd disappeared, he headed for the kitchen, stowing the bottle safely by the door, so he wouldn't forget it on their way out.  
______________

He woke to the sound of something shattering, and he jerked awake, ripping a hole in his sheets with his knife as he bolted upright. It took him a moment to place himself, and once he had, he could hear muffled cursing on the other side of the wall, and the soft rattle of broken glass being swept into a pile. He tucked his knife into his pants and made his way out into the hall. Peeta's room was still and dark.

He knocked lightly on Katniss's door. "All right in there?" he asked quietly, and the sounds went abruptly silent.

"Everything's fine," she replied in a stilted tone he hadn't heard in months. "Nothing's broken."

"You were never any good at lying," he said. "Whatever it was, you could smash twelve of them and I wouldn't care."

She was silent for another long moment. "It was a lamp," she finally admitted.

"Anything on fire?" he asked mildly and heard a low choked sound that was almost a laugh.

"No."

"Anyone bleeding?"

"No."

"Go back to sleep, then. We'll deal with it in the morning."

"Goodnight, Haymitch," she said quietly, her voice just on the other side of the door, and he raised a hand to touch the wood lightly, imagining her leaning against it.

"'Night," he replied. 

His sheets had gone cold by the time he crawled back into them, and he burrowed into them, considering reaching for the bottle beside his bed to send himself back to sleep. He wasn't quite surprised when his door creaked open, but he wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his knife anyway until he saw her clearly outlined in the faint light from the hallway.

"Can I turn on your light?" she asked, closing the door behind her and pressing up against it, and he reached for the lamp himself, both of them blinking in the harsh brightness.

"Nice job," he told her, "throwing the one thing in that room with a practical use against a wall."

"Some of us don't sleep with knives under our pillows," she told him, and he shrugged, sitting up. 

"I don't understand why not," he said. "Did you hit what you were aiming for, at least?"

"I always hit what I'm aiming for. It doesn't seem to make much of a difference." She looked small and cold, leaning there against the door with her arms wrapped around her. He reached for a discarded sweater on the floor and held it out to her, but she crossed the room instead, pulling up the corner of his sheets and then hesitating, looking at him. He obligingly scooted over to the far side of the bed, and she tucked herself in beside him, turning her back to him and burying her face in the pillow. He reached to smooth down the flyaway hair escaping from her braid, and she curled tighter into a ball.

"They never stop, do they?" she asked. "The nightmares."

"No," he said, too tired to lie to her. "The best you can hope for is that they'll change."

"I'd rather they didn't, actually," she said. 

"True," he agreed. "Once they start changing, it's like they're catching up to you." He thought of his own recent dreams, of the fact that when he dreamed of the arena now, Maysilee and the faceless tributes of his own year had been replaced with Katniss and Peeta, Chaff and Effie, Johanna and Finnick, and all the District 12 tributes he'd sworn to protect. And he killed them just the same, night after night, waking to the feeling of warm blood still dripping from his knife over his hands.

He tightened his fingers into fists, pulling his hand away from Katniss's hair, and she rolled over to look at him intently, like she was seeing her way into each of those dreams. She reached out to touch his face, more gently than she did most things, and he looked away at the intensity in her eyes. When she leaned in to touch her lips to his, they were dry and warm, and it was less of a surprise than it should have been. He pulled back anyway, taking her hands by the wrists and placing them gently away from his face.

"Oh sweetheart," he said. "You don't want this."

He expected some retort about how he had no right to tell her what she wanted, but instead she twisted her hands until they were free of his and flexed her fingers, looking at them as if they were foreign. "I don't know what I want," she said, as if she were admitting something she thought he didn't know. He opened his mouth to make some kind of comment to that effect, but she continued. "I know what I need right now, though. I need a lamp that hasn't been shattered to a million pieces. I need a door or five or six between me and the Capitol's cameras. And I need to not be alone."

"Well, you're in luck, then," Haymitch said. "For the first time since this whole crazy adventure started, it appears you have all your requirements at your disposal."

She shook her head. "No," she said. She leaned over him, her skin warm against his through her thin nightclothes. "I need to not _feel_ alone."

His fingers shook as he reached to touch her hip, to hold her steady and keep her from pressing against him any closer and realizing exactly how interested his body was in the feeling of her against him. "Katniss," he said quietly, warningly, and her expression hardened.

"Don't do that," she told him.

"Do what?" he asked.

"Don't make this something that it's not."

"In order to do that, I'd probably have to know what it is," he pointed out. "It's the middle of the night, you're in my bed, you're – " he gestured at his face to indicate kissing, "and you've just broken my lamp in defense against something that wasn't there. It's possible no one in this room is in a place to be making much in the way of decisions tonight."

She looked at him steadily like a challenge for a long moment, and then let out a sigh, deflating and tucking her face against his neck. "Haymitch, what are we doing?" she asked.

"Well…" he began, trying to make a joke of it, but she cut him off.

"All of this – hiding away like we think it's going to help, pretending that we're building some kind of normal life for ourselves here where everything fell apart – I thought Peeta coming back was going to make it better, but – " she broke off and breathed against his skin for a while, and he smoothed her hair, wondering if she was trying not to cry. "When do we get to go for the backup plan?" she finally asked, her voice small and broken.

The words chilled him, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her, holding her close. "The one that gets us all killed?" he clarified. "Not now. Not today."

"They're not going to kill us, Haymitch. Not after everything. And it could make some things better, being somewhere else."

"It could," he agreed. "Or we could end up right back here."

"At least we'd know we chose it, that way," she grumbled. "Maybe you haven't noticed, but choice is something I haven't had a whole lot of."

"I noticed," he said quietly. "I participated, even. But you said it yourself, Katniss. You don't know what you want right now." She curled away from him, but kept close enough for his arm to stay around her. He checked under his pillow for his knife with his other hand and closed his eyes. "Once you figure that out, let me know, and I'll be the first one in line to help you make it happen, whatever it is."

She was quiet for long enough that he thought she had fallen asleep, and started to nod off himself. Then, very quietly, she said, "I know you will." He fell asleep to the feeling of her breathing beside him, and he didn't dream.  
______________

"It's going to be a long night," Haymitch said, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table and pouring another drink. "If they're starting at One and working their way up to us."

"That's how it always works," Peeta said with a sigh. "We're going to have to prop you up by the time they get to their boring shots of our empty houses, aren't we?"

"Is that a dealbreaker?" Haymitch asked.

The special cut to commercial with a teaser of their segment, including footage from the Reaping of the 74th Games, with Effie ushering the two stunned tributes off the stage. They looked unbearably young and scared, and Haymitch took a moment to comfort himself by looking them over, huddled together on his couch, taking in all the familiar lines the years had brought to their faces. A faint smile had appeared on Peeta's, but Katniss looked stricken.

"I never found out," she said. "About Effie. I have no idea if she even lived or not, after the trial."

"She did," Haymitch said. "Well," he corrected, "she had, as of when we left Thirteen."

Katniss looked at him sharply. "You knew that?"

"And you didn't tell us?" Peeta asked with a matching look.

"I wasn't sure you'd want to know," he told them. "Considering how many people didn't make it out alive, knowing that she did might not have been a great consolation prize." When they didn't say anything, he continued. "You knew she was alive as of the trial. After you found your prep team, Katniss, I thought to check. She had been – " he paused. "Recovered," he finally went with, and saw Peeta wince. Katniss reached out to press a hand to his leg comfortingly. "It took some negotiating, but she was eventually…left to her own devices, more or less."

"You're the one who got her out?" Katniss asked with a note of incredulity.

"I convinced her captors that she had nothing of value to give them," he corrected. "That she'd maybe never had anything of value to give anyone."

"That's unfair," Peeta said.

"Of course it's unfair. And it might even have been untrue. But it worked."

"Where did she go, after everything?" Katniss asked, and Haymitch shrugged. 

"Home, hopefully."

"To the Capitol?"

"She wasn't from the Capitol," he said. Both of them looked surprised, and he suspected it was less at the revelation than at the realization that he knew anything at all about Effie Trinket. "She was born in Eight, and went to the Capitol in the hopes of being a stylist. When that didn't work out, she took a job as an escort instead."

The corner of Peeta's mouth turned up just the slightest bit. "Can you imagine?" he asked. He held his hands up like a marquee. "Designs by Effie."

Katniss cringed. "I can, is the problem." She looked at Haymitch, assessing him. "You worked with her for a long time."

" _With_ is a strong word," he said. "But yeah. I knew her longer than I've ever known anyone."

" _Anyone_?" Peeta echoed, looking dismayed.

"She came to Twelve in my fifth year as a mentor, still thinking that if she put in her time, she'd make it onto a styling team. She was nineteen."

"And she stayed?" Katniss asked. "With _Twelve_?"

"That's the part that kills me," Haymitch said. "I actually think she really believed she was providing a service, genuinely trying to help those kids - _you_ kids," he corrected himself, "enjoy what little life they had left."

"Twenty years," Peeta said, sounding dazed.

"Twenty years," Haymitch agreed. He lifted his glass in the direction of the screen. "To Effie," he said amiably. "Not even close to the worst the Capitol had to offer."

"High praise," Katniss muttered, but she lifted her glass as well, clinking it against Peeta's.

"It's possible that not everyone in the Capitol was a monster, Katniss," Haymitch pointed out. "Unlikely, but possible. I lived in the Capitol for a while, you know."

"Yeah, well," she said. "I hate you sometimes too." The words came easily enough that he knew she meant them.

"The feeling's mutual, sweetheart," he replied, and he could tell by her half smile that she knew his words only came easily when he was lying. He leaned back into his armchair, swallowing the last of the liquor in his glass. "Remind me again why we're doing this?" he asked, grimacing at the sight of Enobaria baring her teeth on the screen.

"Curiosity?" Peeta offered. "Responsibility? Penance?"

"He's a ball of sunshine, isn't he?" Haymitch said to Katniss, and she shrugged. "I guess I already know the answer, though. We're just trying to stay on top of the story."

"What story?" Peeta asked. "We didn't give them anything to make a story out of."

"Exactly," Haymitch said darkly.

It was hours later when their segment aired, and the edges of the screen were blurry with liquor when Katniss hurled her glass into it, sailing harmlessly through the hologram and shattering against the wall behind it.

"Feel better?" Haymitch asked mildly, and she turned on him instead.

"You knew," she accused.

He shrugged. "I guessed. I've been in this business a lot longer than you have, sweetheart. I know what these people are capable of, and I know that they're not very good at taking no for an answer."

"The things they're saying about us – about _you_ \- "

"It's nothing they haven't said before," he said, and she gave him a withering look.

"They think you've snapped, Haymitch. That you've taken us prisoner here."

"Haven't I?" he asked, eyeing her carefully, and he saw her deflate slightly. 

"That's not – " she began.

"Not what? Not the same? Not fair? None of this is fucking fair, Katniss. You'd think someone in your position would have figured that out by now." 

She slumped down onto the couch beside Peeta. "We should have talked to them," she said dully. "We should have let them in our houses, with their cameras and their questions – "

"No," Peeta said sharply. His face was pale and angry as he looked between them. "We're done giving them what they're looking for. I'm never putting on a show for their cameras _ever_ again."

"You tell 'em, kid," Haymitch said quietly, lifting his bottle to his lips.

Katniss looked between them, simmering with quiet rage. "You're just going to put up with this?"

"In case you hadn't noticed, darling," Haymitch drawled, "the things they're suggesting reflect a whole lot more badly on me than they do on you." He reached to touch the end of her hair, and tried not to let it faze him when she flinched away. "And let's face it, I don't have much of a reputation left to uphold. There are plenty of people out there who don't know you've been banished, and to them – "

"Wait," Peeta interrupted, "been _what_?"

"See?" Haymitch asked. 

Peeta was off the couch in seconds, rounding on him, fingers tightened into fists. "You let them make her a prisoner?" he demanded.

Haymitch shrugged unapologetically. "It was better than letting them make her dead."

"Was it?" Peeta asked in a tone that left no illusion they were talking about Katniss anymore. "Was it really?"

"Peeta," Haymitch said in a low voice, and it was the first time in his life he'd seen a punch coming and let it happen. Peeta's fist connected with his jaw solid and painful, rocking his chair back, and he almost welcomed the sharp rush of sensation. It dulled quickly, though, and he reached up to rub at his face gingerly. "You want another?" he offered. "You're entitled to at least a couple of freebies."

There was a depth of anger, pain, and conflict in Peeta's eyes that hurt to look at, but Haymitch held his gaze, waiting for him to be the one to tear his eyes away. "I'll save them," he said in a low voice that was almost entirely unfamiliar. "I'm sure you'll deserve it again."

"Every fucking day," Haymitch said with a grin he was pretty sure displayed a full set of bloody teeth. Neither of them winced. He pushed himself up until he was standing. "This has been fun, you guys, but I'm calling it a night. Let's do it again sometime. Say, next year. Same time, same place." He watched the words hit them, Peeta folding back onto the couch like Haymitch had retaliated with a punch of his own, Katniss's face going carefully blank. "Oh, you thought this was over?" he asked. "You thought that the publicity machine would see a closed door, make up some far-fetched story, and leave you alone for the rest of your lives? It doesn’t matter who's sitting in the big house in the Capitol, that's not a life you get to live. You're two of the last remaining victors, symbols of the rebellion. They're never going to stop thinking you owe them."

"We owe them nothing," Katniss spat.

"Now you're catching on," Haymitch said. "You asked me, a while back, if it could ever be enough. Living here, doing what we do. Of course it can't. We've been to war, we've planned a coup, we've become household names across a country that was using us to rip those households apart. Anything's going to be a small life, after that. But the alternative – " he waved a hand at the flickering screen and shrugged. "You tell me." He retrieved his bottle from beside the armchair. "Maybe you two are the lucky ones, maybe you've stopped having nightmares about the cameras. But every night, when I dream about killing the two of you in your sleep, I'm dreaming that the world gets to see it in sixteen different angles." He toasted them with the bottle. "Sleep well," he said, voice dripping with irony, and left them sitting there together on the couch, letting the door slam behind him.

He made it out to the porch before his stomach rebelled, and he puked off the edge of it into one of Peeta's rosebushes. He let himself fold up there against the side of the house, and he wrapped his hand around his knife, holding it close to his side as he tilted his head back against the wall, letting the soft indistinct murmur of their voices drag him down into darkness.  
______________

He woke to the feeling of Katniss's boot against his side. "You dead?" she asked, sounding more or less unconcerned with the answer.

"Unfortunately, no." He groaned and buried his face in his arm.

"Too bad," she said, but she crouched by his side and he felt something cold pressing into his hand. "Here, you probably need this," she said. He wrapped his hand around the frozen bag and sat up, squinting against the harsh sunlight. "Oh," she said, sounding halfway between dismayed and amused. 

Her fingers reached out to carefully probe at his jaw, and he jerked away, pressing the bag to it instead. "Ow?" he objected. He blinked a few times, steadying himself, and settled back against the house. "You're still here," he said.

She looked faintly surprised. "Was I going somewhere?"

"After last night?" he asked. "If you had any sense, you would be."

She shook her head and settled down next to him, leaning against his shoulder companionably. "We all know I have more in the way of guts than sense."

"The broadcasts weren't all wrong," he pointed out. "You're not exactly safe here."

"Safe," she repeated, sounding amused. "Peeta, you hear that?" she called into the house. "Haymitch thinks we're not safe here." Peeta's reply was indistinct, but it made her smile fondly. She turned back to him and the smile melted away, leaving her serious and scrutinizing him. "We're not going anywhere," she finally said.

"Okay," he agreed, lacking anything more specific to say.

"I've killed people scarier than you, Haymitch," she said. "And I've killed you in my dreams more times than I can count. If you want to chase us off, you're going to have to do something bigger than anything you ever did to save our lives." 

"I was doing what was best for the revolution," he said flatly. 

"What about before there was a revolution?" she pressed.

He laughed. "Oh, sweetheart. You think you were the beginning of the revolution? You were just the end of it. This thing has been in the works since before your dad sang to his first mockingjay. Don't flatter yourself."

"Fine," she said. "Let's say, for the sake of argument, that nothing you did from the time we got reaped had anything to do with us." She paused, looking around them. "What about now? I don't know if you've noticed, Haymitch, but the war is over."

"The war is over," he agreed, "and I've been appointed your jailer."

"Right, and we all know you have such a high regard for those in power, that you always do your very best with the tasks that are given you."

"What are you getting at, sweetheart?" he asked. "Because I've got to tell you, I am still half asleep, I've got a hangover that could take down the Capitol itself, and I am at least three cups of coffee and two shots away from doing any kind of logical thinking."

She looked at him for a long moment, then said, "I broke your TV. Actually, I broke all your TVs."

He smiled faintly. "I guess we're not going to be watching the special next year?"

"I don't think so, no," she said.

"Good." 

"I don't know if we'll still be here, next year."

He carefully didn't let himself respond until he knew his voice would be calm and even. "You think so?"

She lifted a shoulder. "I told Peeta," she said. "About the backup plan."

He blinked and slid his eyes over to look at her sideways. "Oh yeah?" he asked. "The one where we learn to have all new nightmares in all new places?"

"That's the one." 

"And what did he say?"

"That we've both lost our minds."

"Well, that's a given," Haymitch agreed.

"And that he'd go, if we wanted."

"Does he know – "

"I told him everything," she said shortly, but he took in the way she looked down at her hands instead of at him.

"I think you actually mean that," he said. "Whatever that might mean, coming from you."

She looked up and met his eyes. "It means I don't want to live for an audience anymore." 

"You never wanted to," he pointed out.

"No," she agreed, "we have that much in common."

He shook his head. "If you think the benders weren't for the benefit of the cameras, you've never listened to me at all."

"Wait," said Peeta from the doorway, balancing a tray full of rolls and a thermos of coffee. "We were supposed to listen to you?" He settled down across from them, setting down the tray and handing the thermos directly to Haymitch. His eyes caught on the bruise at the edge of Haymitch's face, and he winced. "I'd say I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm not."

"You brought me coffee," Haymitch said. "All is forgiven." The look they shared acknowledged that nothing was, and maybe nothing would ever be, but that whatever they were doing here might be bigger than forgiveness anyway.

They had breakfast there on the porch as the sun rose, casting shadows across the courtyard, and they talked about the parts of the special they remembered from the night before, the parts of the country that were just starting to stitch themselves back together. They shared coffee and stories, and eventually even some laughter, and even knowing that a day, a week, a month down the line, they'd be sharing nightmares and accusations and blows again, Haymitch was able to close his eyes, tilt his head back against the side of the house, and doze off without a knife in his hand.  
______________

The next time she came to him in the night, he wasn't asleep yet, and he wasn't surprised.

"Hi, sweetheart," he said, looking up from his book. "What – " he began, then stopped short as Peeta slipped into the room beside her. "Well. That's new." He eyed the two of them, Katniss looking stubborn, Peeta looking uncertain, and he sighed. "If you're asking me to run away with you again, I'd prefer to wait til morning." He held his book up, then set it aside. "I'm just getting to the good part." He lowered his voice, looking at Peeta. "That means the part with the fucking," he said in a stage whisper.

"I've read that one. There's no – " Peeta began, then stopped. "You're screwing with me."

"Damn, he's catching on," Haymitch said to Katniss. "What are we going to do now?" She didn't look amused, and he sobered, sitting up and patting the bed beside him. She crossed the room wordlessly, and after a minute so did Peeta, settling at the foot of the bed while she perched beside Haymitch, legs tucked under her.

They were silent for a long moment, looking between each other, until she finally said, "I know what I want." Her hands were folded in her lap, and she looked down at them, studying her fingers. Haymitch reached to cover her hands with one of his.

"Good," he said simply. He looked between them, at their expressions, and he nodded slowly, feeling sick. "And you came to tell me you're leaving."

"What?" she looked startled, then gripped his hand with one of hers, frowning. "No! I came to tell you that we're fucking." She looked so earnest and offended by his assumption that he couldn't help but laugh.

"Oh, sweetheart, you think I didn't know that?"

She looked over at Peeta, who shrugged minutely. "Yes?" she offered.

Haymitch chuckled some more, patting her hand and pulling his away. "You have been on and off since the spring," he said. He nodded towards Peeta. "There's this face he gets, when you're not looking – " Peeta went red. "I mean, he's always painfully in love with you, but there's a difference between being painfully in love and pretty happy about it, and painfully in love and tragic. He hasn't been all that tragic in a while." He sobered, reaching to touch Katniss's face lightly. "I'm glad," he said simply. "But it really didn't have to be a grand confession." He grinned at Peeta. "You guys have been _planning_ this, haven't you? How to tell me? That's…oddly sweet."

They exchanged a glance. "Not…exactly," Peeta offered, and when Haymitch turned to look at Katniss, she was leaning in, looking at him intently, and he didn't have quite enough time to formulate some kind of response before she kissed him, firm and soft and definite, so unlike the last time that he found himself kissing back, yielding easily to the press of her lips.

"Oh," he said when she pulled back, looking first at Peeta watching them with interest, then at Katniss kneeling beside him expectantly. "If this is a fuck you to the Capitol for that broadcast – " he began, and Katniss flinched.

"It's not a fuck you to anyone," she said sharply. "It's – " her expression softened into confusion, a search for words, and she looked over to Peeta.

"We fit," he said simply. "In our lives, in everything else, and we thought that maybe – " He looked at Haymitch guardedly. "You care about us," he said. "Whatever that means, with everything – " He waved a hand to indicate all they'd gone through. "You're here."

"I have to be here," he reminded them.

"No, you don't," Peeta said. "You know as well as we do that Heavensbee wouldn't stand for you getting killed. He still thinks you have the potential to be useful to him someday. You could have taken off into any other district at any time, and left us here to fend for ourselves. You didn't. You won't."

"You do realize that most people wouldn't consider _this_ to be the reasonable conclusion, right?" Haymitch asked.

"Our lives aren't like most people's," Katniss pointed out. She leaned in again, but paused with a hand against his shoulder, her face close to his. "We want to," she said simply. "If you don't – " she left it hanging there, an offer and an acceptance of whatever he decided, and he closed his eyes, remembering the feeling of her pressing against him, the nights when he'd see a glimpse of the shadows of them together in her bedroom and duck away from the window, instantly hard. 

"Goddamn, sweetheart," he said quietly, "you can never make anything easy, can you?" He tucked her hair back from her face and kept his hand there against the base of her neck as he leaned in to kiss her again, sharp and hungry, like a warning. She responded easily, though, swinging a leg over him and settling in against him, kissing him back with a matching sense of urgency.

She rocked against him as his mouth found a sensitive spot on her throat, Peeta's eyes meeting his over her shoulder, and he suddenly had the realization that her motions were more practiced, more steady than the last time he'd had her in his bed like this, and that Peeta was the reason for it. He wondered what she had learned from him, and vice versa, and what Peeta may have learned from Haymitch through Katniss, and the thought went instantly to his dick. 

" _Fuck_ ," he breathed against her neck, and she pushed him back, sliding away from him to pull her clothes off without any sense of making a show of it. Both of them had their eyes on her, though, and when she was naked, it was Peeta she turned to, kissing him slow and familiar and peeling him out of his clothes as well. Their movements were practiced and intimate, and Haymitch watched them together and wondered how they possibly thought that anyone else could fit into the charged space between them. She pulled away and crossed the bed to him again, though, and he reached out a hand to touch her tentatively, his hand hesitant against the soft skin of her hip, then sliding up her back, not avoiding the scars, but not pausing over them either. She shivered at the touch, and her eyes met his and held as she pushed off his shirt, then reached to undo his pants.

He kicked them off awkwardly, and felt a sudden rush of absurdity at the moment, in bed naked with two beautiful young people, but then she was reaching to stroke him lightly, and all rational doubts slid instantly out of his grasp. 

" _Oh,_ " he choked out, pushing up into her hand, and he looked past her at Peeta, who was watching with wide eyes.

"Hey," Haymitch said to him, and Peeta's eyes darted up to meet his, looking faintly embarrassed. "Are you even – " he nodded downwards, and enjoyed the way Peeta flushed. 

"I…don't know," he admitted. He looked at Katniss and then back up at Haymitch in a way that clearly indicated that he hadn't had much thought about attraction to people who weren't her in a long time. "I've thought about you, though," he said, casting his eyes downward in a way that left no question as to his meaning, and it was Haymitch's turn to feel embarrassed.

"Oh," he said inarticulately, and was saved from having to answer further by Katniss leaning down and carefully taking him in her mouth. "Oh, holy fuck."

Peeta's smile was knowing and just a little smug. "Yeah," he agreed. He reached to touch her hair lightly, and she let out a low noise of approval as she pulled back and ducked back down again. Haymitch held himself still, shaking from the feeling of her mouth hot and slick around him, and eventually he reached down to touch her face, pull her off him carefully.

"You've got to stop that," he said in a voice that wasn't as steady as he would have hoped, and she looked completely unapologetic at the way he couldn't even process her words as she said, "You could, if you want."

"I don't want to," he said. "What I want is to get you off again." He shifted his eyes to Peeta, realizing that the _again_ may have been a mistake, but Peeta met his eyes knowingly and just nodded in agreement. 

Peeta slid up behind Katniss, and she leaned back against him familiarly, arching as his fingers slipped down to touch her, and when he raised an eyebrow at Haymitch over her shoulder, he was only too happy to lean in and let his hand join Peeta's. Katniss gasped, and Haymitch slid his fingers inside her easily, fucking her slowly as Peeta teased her clit. She was as intense in bed as she was in all other things, and she kept her eyes open as they touched her, watching Haymitch seriously until she started to come, tightening around him and dropping her head back onto Peeta's shoulder. She shook, afterwards, and reached to touch herself lazily, both of them watching until her hips started to move again, fucking her hand, and then Haymitch leaned down to take her wrist and pull her hand gently away, replacing it with his mouth.

She got off the second time with her hand tangled in his hair, Peeta holding her up. Haymitch sat back and she relaxed against the bed briefly, Peeta scooting out from behind her to let her stretch out. When she reached for Peeta, he went willingly, crawling up her body and leaning in to kiss her deeply. Her hands went to his hips, tugging insistently, and when her legs dropped apart under him, he pushed forward, groaning quietly as he let her guide him into her. Haymitch felt his breath catch at the intimacy of the moment, the intensity of her eyes meeting his as Peeta fucked her, and when she looked him up and down, it was like he was getting the permission he needed to wrap a hand around himself and come apart to the sight of them fucking there in his bed, her lips red and wet from kissing both of them, her eyes holding his as Peeta came inside her, dropping his head to her shoulder and crying out. She finished herself off for a third time with her fingers, gasping, and Peeta rolled off of her, catching his breath. He looked over his shoulder at Haymitch, sitting there against the head of the bed, and the smile he gave him was so genuine and uncomplicated that it hurt. 

They pulled clothes back on afterwards, her in her underwear and shirt, him in his pants, and Haymitch missed being able to touch the expanse of her skin as she climbed into bed beside him, but he understood. He slid down to settle his head on the pillow, and watched Peeta climb into bed behind her. They stayed silent for a long time, and it was Katniss who broke it, propping herself up on one arm to look down at Haymitch.

"What, no lecture on how much we're going to regret this in the morning?" she prompted.

He shrugged. "Do you think you're going to?"

"No."

"Then no," he said. "No lecture."

Peeta fell asleep first, and the smile his quiet snores brought to Katniss's face was one Haymitch had seen years ago, projected on a screen from a cave in the woods that he had genuinely believed they'd never return from. He reached to touch the corner of her mouth lightly, and the smile disappeared.

"I'm glad you made it out alive," he said.

"Some days I'm not," she said, echoing an admission Peeta had made to him as well. The smile returned, though, more restrained this time, and he wondered if maybe this was the smile she kept for him. "Not today, though. Today's not too bad."

"No," he agreed. "Not too bad." She tucked her head against his shoulder, and he fell asleep before she did, one arm around her and the other hand wrapped around his knife under his pillow.  
______________

"Ready?" Peeta asked from the doorway, and Haymitch tucked one more bottle into his pack.

"Ready as I'm getting," he replied. 

The sun was bright and warm as they stepped out onto the porch, and he could hear the geese honking in the backyard. "Shut your traps," he yelled at them. "You're not going to die, Sae will look after you."

Katniss was waiting for them, sitting on her front steps with her knees tucked up, bow balanced against them. Excited was an expression Haymitch hadn't seen on her often, and he liked what it did to the light in her eyes, the corners of her lips. Her hair was braided neatly around her head, and her bag was smaller than either of theirs.

"You're going to miss them, aren't you?" she asked, only a little mocking, and he shrugged carelessly.

"Those featherbrains? About as much as you're going to miss that asshole cat of yours."

"We'll be back," Peeta said confidently, and Katniss raised an eyebrow at him.

"You don't know that," she said. "We could get killed. Or captured. Or you could find a nice plot of land in Eleven and decide you never want to leave."

Peeta just shook his head. "Twelve's home," he said simply.

She made a face, but looked around one last time as they headed for the archway, towards town. "Twelve's gone," she replied.

"Twelve's different," Peeta corrected. "That's not the same thing."

"For you, maybe," she replied, and something in her expression kept him from pushing any further.

"So where are we headed?" Haymitch asked. "You know, so I can figure out how worried I should be."

"I thought Four first," Katniss said. "I'd like to see my mother's hospital, and Annie."

"Sounds like as good a plan as any," Haymitch agreed. "And after that?"

She shrugged. "After that, we start figuring out how long we can stay in a place before the nightmares come back."

"If you think it's more than one night, you might be in for a rude awakening," he told her.

"Maybe," she agreed, "but there's only one way to find out."

"Never do anything the easy way, do you, sweetheart?" he asked, reaching to ruffle her hair, and she ducked away, letting Peeta take her hand as they walked toward the train station.

"Not ever," she agreed, smiling at him. "And aren't you glad?"

"Every day," he replied honestly, and he followed them down the road, towards whatever was next.


End file.
